One of my New Year’s resolutions was to become a better communicator. This is turning out to be a good thing, but a lot more challenging than one might think. Why is this? Is it because people dont usually take the time to work on their communication skills? Or am I just especially bad at it? Oh well, it’s a work in progress.

It kind of feels like I’m getting all my bones broken in order to grow back right. Like somewhere along the line, I got formed wrong. Consequently, I make a lot of mistakes, I guess due to all the…broken bones. All right, I’m gonna stop with the bone analogy. But seriously.

For example, the when to stop conundrum. On one side, you have the person who really really wants to solve this RIGHT NOW, and not end things until some kind of agreement is reached. This person is usually me. Then on the other side, you have the person speaking the words I hate to hear: “Let’s stop talking about this.” “The conversation is over.” “I’m not mad, but if you keep asking me, I’ll get mad.” “You’re driving me crazy.” “It’s four o’clock in the morning; I have to go to sleep.”

Okay, I’ve actually gotten better about the whole sleep deprivation tactic, in that I don’t do it anymore ’cause it got me dumped twice, but it’s still hard for me to abruptly stop talking about something when nothing’s been settled. The need to let things go sometimes is clear, especially in hindsight, and I dont want to be Dawson or Meadow Soprano, because I get how maddening it is to fight with someone who just won’t stop. But when I’m the one being told to drop it, I feel very helpless.

So how do you go about learning the balance? How do you know if you’re being overly controlling by wanting to hash things out, or if the other person is being controlling by ending the discussion? Trial and error, I guess. Maybe taking turns. It’s a very tricky business, this mature communicating. But I will figure it out.